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Aug.29th

Corner back Quinton Richardson, who has been sidelined with a high ankle sprain, practiced on Monday even seeing time with No. 1 defense during team periods.

Richardson had the ankle heavily taped or “spatted” on the outside of his shoe. He moved pretty well straight ahead, but he was moving very gingerly on lateral moves where he had to put a ton of pressure on the ankle. He wasn’t moving with great ease.

The real test will be how he feels tomorrow after testing it significantly today.

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Aug.29th

OK, it’s game week. This is why we do what we do to get to this point. I’m proud of what our kids have been able to accomplish for three weeks of training camp. I think we’ve evolved as a team. We’ve come together as a team which is vitally important. And now we are posed with a challenging schedule and season to kick it off against Eastern Washington. I congratulated Coach Baldwin when he won a national championship at the end of the year, and I had to remind myself that we play them at the beginning of this year.

This is a football team that plays extremely hard. They are very well coached. And because of that, they are opportunistic. I think we saw that in the playoffs, when you watch the games and look at the film. They make the plays at the most opportunistic times to really change games. You have to have good players in place to make that happen.

Obviously on offense with the quarterback (Bo) Levi Mitchell, the offensive line returning four or five starters, the long rangy tall wide receivers they possess offensively, present challenges.

Defensively, up front with (Renard) Williams at defensive tackle and the Johnsons (Zach and Matt) at middle linebacker and safety, their defense is really anchored right down the middle, which is where you want to be anchored. That’s where your defense has to begin.

It’s an exciting time for us, but yet one that we know is very a challenging. A team that’s coming in here with a lot of confidence, that’s won a lot of football games. More games than we’ve won the last two years that’s for sure. It will pose a great threat for us that way.

As far as our football team, where we’ve come a long way, in my opinion, is just the depth. The simple fact that we are going to play more bodies than we ever have at wide receiver, at defensive line, at linebacker, at safety and play guys earlier in the ballgame, not waiting. You are going to see guys in the third series of the game. You are going to see a lot of different numbers. That’s the beauty of creating depth on your roster and playing guys and giving them opportunities to play. I think you’ll see that as a little different bit of a change of who we are and what we’ve been the last couple of years.

We do not yet know the status of Polk, Richardson or Fogerson. We’ll assess them as the week goes on. We’d like to make some form of a decision, at least internally at least by Wednesday, but that remains to be seen, so we’ll see where we go from there.

As for the punter, Rasp and Mahan will both punt. Hopefully we don’t punt too many times. You never like sending your punting unit out there. You’ll see both those guys punting.

Some other notes … The goal for us this year is to redshirt Cody Bruns for a lot of reason, some personal, some strategic on our part. It would be great to have a veteran leader, senior wide receiver next year as we graduate some seniors this year. Because of the depth at the position and some of the things in his personal life, we think that’s the best thing for him and the best thing for us. We’ll see how that goes.

As far as other redshirts on our roster, there’s some really easier decisions to make. The Kasen Williams’, the Austin Seferian-Jenkins’, the Danny Shelton’s, those guys are going to play. There’s a lot of easier ones to make of guys that are ensuring of redshirts. And then we’ve got some gray areas on some guys that we are going to have to make some tough decisions on here throughout this week and then potentially into next week and the week after that as they develop. Some of those guys are obviously are a Bishop Sankey, a James Sample, a Marcus Peters, some guys that are on the cusp and kind of in and out of the two-deep and with injuries and what-not how that plays.

The last thing I want to do is have a kid play and have him get 18 or 20 snaps on a year. That’s not worth it for him and that’s not worth it for us in the long run. We have to make sure it’s worth their while, it’s worth our while, that they are getting substantial time where they can benefit this year from playing. If not, I know the majority of these kids can benefit from this year from redshirting for the long run of this program and where we are headed. We’ll have to make some tough decisions as the week goes on.

I do feel like this ball game traditionally is one when you kick off the season and it’s your first ball game, so much of the stuff concerning on my end, is the line of scrimmage, the false starts, the illegal procedures, defensive linemen lined up in the neutral zone, the timing on stuff like fly sweeps and things we like to do – to make sure that stuff is on point. Things can go astray when you are starting first and 15 because of a false start or you are fumbling a snap, or an exchange on a fly sweep. Those things will really be our focus throughout this week and to make sure we are clean at the line of scrimmage come Saturday. And also that are our energy, our enthusiasm and our effort is right come Saturday. Of course we want to do things right. I want to make sure our energy is right, our enthusiasms is right and our effort is right when we come out to play Saturday afternoon.

And lastly, it’s going to be great to get out in front of our fans. To be in Husky Stadium for the final season of this place and to kick it off an in-state opponent – Eastern Washington – it’s an exciting time. I think our kids are really going to embrace the atmosphere, and we are hopeful our fans embrace the ball game as well.

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Aug.29th

There are no updates on the status of running back Chris Polk (knee), running back Johri Fogerson (hip) and Quinton Richardson (ankle).

“We do not yet know the status of Polk, Richardson or Fogerson,” Sarkisian said. “We’ll assess them as the week goes on. We’d like to make some form of a decision, at least internally at least by Wednesday, but that remains to be seen, so we’ll see where we go from there.”

He also talked about redshirt. He doesn’t want to play a freshman if he’s only going to play …

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Aug.29th

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Aug.29th

Good morning, sorry for not links post yesterday, but a few things came up, including some work on the preview section which will run on Wednesday.

Anyway, we’ll get to a few things before I have to head up to Montlake for head coach Steve Sarkisian’s Monday press conference.

Columnist John McGrath wrote this column for Sunday’s newspaper. But I wanted to post it on here. With FCS national champion Eastern Washington coming to Husky Stadium on Saturday, McGrath took the occasion to write about the 2007 stunner when Appalachian State rolled into Ann Arbor and stunned then …

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Aug.27th

The Huskies running back corps was already somewhat depleted with Chris Polk out for a few weeks after minor knee surgery and Deontae Cooper out for the season with a torn ACL, and it took another hit today with Johri Fogerson sitting out practice with a mild hip strain, according to head coach Steve Sarkisian.

About

A proud native of Longview, Wash., Christian Caple joins The News Tribune after covering Washington State football and men's basketball for two years at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane (though he lived in Pullman). He is a 2010 graduate of the University of Washington, an avid NWAACC basketball fan, and is unsure how to proceed now that Breaking Bad is over.